Modern Hiker

In more whimsical (and unemployed) days, I used to co-write a snarky blog called Tale of Two Cities with an ex-roommate who lived on the east coast. We’d launch faux-attacks on the city the other person lived in, trying to answer the age old question: Which city is better, New York or Los Angeles?

So far, in the Step It Up 2007 campaign, New York is definitely taking the proverbial cake.

In their weekly update on the project, the Step It Up folks profiled a project in the Big Apple called Sea of People.

The project already has is aiming for thousands of participants - hopefully including a few prominent local Presidential candidates - who will line up across Manhattan’s new post-global-warming coastline wearing blue to give everyone a tangible, visual idea of what a small rise in ocean levels can do to a coastal city.

It sounds like a great idea. It’s big, it’s simple, it’s visual - and it sounds like they’ve got may have a little bit of political star power behind it.

So what do we here in the Stardust Rodeo have to offer?

A big fat nothing.

On the Step It Up web site, celebrity-rich West L.A. has two events. One of them looks like a lecture, and the other one looks like someone started to sign up for an event, then couldn’t figure out how to do it.

What?!?

Is this the same city that just paraded it’s celebu-elite around in fancy Prius limos for the Oscars? The city that jumps at any excuse to call attention to itself? Antonio Villaraigosa’s town?

To be fair, Claremont and Thousand Oaks look like they’ve got their act together, but it’s a bit embarrassing that L.A. Proper doesn’t have a single event yet - let alone anything on the visual scale of the Sea of People project.

Come on, Hollywood! Let’s put that pollution-causing star power to good use!

EDIT: So far, the Sea of People doesn’t have any confirmed political big-wigs. I misread the Step it Up site’s hopefulness. Apologies!